Applying for power of attorney? Avoid these 12 mistakes which could see you rejected

• Nearly 51,000 applications were rejected last year, many due to minor mistakes 

The number of people setting up a legal failsafe in case they fall ill is soaring, but nearly 51,000 applications were rejected last year.

Around 30,200 financial and 20,700 health and welfare Lasting Powers of Attorney were turned down due to errors such as misspelled names, missing or illegible information and conflicting instructions.

Applications for LPAs, which appoint a trusted family member or friend to take over your finances or make medical decisions if necessary, rose 28 per cent to 1.37million.

That is up 60 per cent on applications five years ago, according to figures from the Office of the Public Guardian which runs the system.

The rejection rate in 2023-2024 was 3.7 per cent, notes investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown, which obtained the figures via a freedom of information request.

> Find common errors to avoid and a checklist for making applications below 

Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at Hargreaves, says: 'There's a significant backlog in applications, and in 2023/24 it took an average of 76 working days to process each one.

'If you make a mistake, that will prolong the agony, because the application will be rejected. It means families need to take care not to fall foul of the rules.'

She adds there are changes in the pipeline which should help streamline the process, and mean you can do more online, but no date has been set for this yet.

'It will include more robust ID checks, and will change the system, so that instead of either the donor [the person appointing the attorney] or the attorney being able to register the LPA, only the donor will be able to,' she says.

'You'll need to make sure you know what this means for you when the rules come in.'

Many people use lawyers to set up their LPAs to avoid making errors. Costs vary greatly but you can expect to pay £300-400 for help with one LPA, with deals available if you want to get both a finance and health and welfare LPA at once or a couple are setting them up together.

However, the bill can be bigger if you have complicated affairs. You will also need to pay £82 per LPA to register them with the OPG.

Without an LPA, families can find themselves locked out of an ailing relative's finances and forced to apply for deputyship. This involves a complicated court process and fees running into many thousands of pounds.

People who have an old Enduring Power of Attorney for financial affairs set up before 2007 are being warned to consider switching to an LPA.

An EPA can only be registered in a protracted process after you fall ill, but an LPA can be registered at the time you set it up then take effect immediately if it is needed later.

Holly Chantler, director at The Association of Lifetime Lawyers, says that 50,000 LPA rejections over a year works out at around 137 a day.

'Processing times for applications can take up to 16 weeks, even when everything is filled out correctly.' she says.

'Any mistakes can cause significant delays, making it crucial to get it right the first time. LPAs cannot be used until they have been registered and if the person who made the LPA no longer has capacity to make a new LPA, this can cause significant issues.

Chantler says a common error is to use the wrong form. Make sure you use the LP1F for property and financial affairs and the LP1H for health decisions, check they are the latest versions, and don't mix up pages from both.

'Another common issue is using pencil or correction fluid, which are not allowed,' she adds. 'Only blue or black ink should be used, and any errors must be crossed out neatly, corrected beside the mistake, and initialled by the person making the amendment.'

She says always use full names, because using initials or omitting details is a common reason for refusal.

Chantler explains the order people must sign in, which is critical: the donor first, the witnesses, the certificate provider, the attorneys - who must also have their signatures witnessed - and then the person registering the LPA again.

'You must ensure your witnesses are eligible. For example, an attorney cannot witness the donor's (the person making the LPA) signature due to a conflict of interest.'

Twelve common power of attorney mistakes to avoid

Sarah Coles of Hargreaves Lansdown compiled this rundown of typical errors people make when applying for LPAs.

1. Spelling names wrong

ID checks will fail if the name is spelled wrong. They can also fail if you have muddled the order of first and middle names.

2. Signing in the wrong order

There are an impressive five sets of signatures you need on the application, and they have to be done in the right order. If the dates on the signatures show they were signed out of order, it will be rejected.

3. Missing information

You need the names, addresses and dates of birth of the donor and attorneys – in full. You also need to complete every section.

Sometimes people won't fully understand the section on how they want attorneys to act, so they'll leave it blank. This will lead to the application being rejected.

4. Illegible information

If they can't read your handwriting or understand your corrections, they will reject it.

5. Bad corrections

If you make a mistake on the form, you need to cross out the mistake, correct it, and then initial it. It needs to be initialled by the person who made the mistake. If you use correction fluid, or don't initial the correction – or the wrong person does – it'll be rejected.

6. Poor notifications

Part of the process of registering means notifying specific people that you've said you will tell. There's a specific form you have to send to each of them.

If you're doing both a health and welfare LPA and a financial one, and you're notifying the same people, you'll need to send them two forms each – one for each LPA – because they're treated as separate applications

7. Confusing instructions and preferences

Instructions specify things that your attorneys must do and preferences are those things that you would like them to do, so the language matters.

If you include an instruction to use funds to benefit someone other than you – like making gifts – it is likely to fail because it might conflict with the duty to act in your best interests.

It means it's best to include this as a preference: something you would like them to do.

8. Issuing conflicting instructions

Take care that instructions don't conflict with something else in the document.

If, for example, you have appointed attorneys 'jointly and severally' it means they can make any decisions on their own or together, so you can't include an instruction that says one attorney must do as the other says or that in the case of disagreements you want to go with the majority.

9. Telling attorneys they should act in the interests of anyone else

They act for you alone, so they can't put your partner or children first.

10. Trying to dictate how replacement attorneys act

The form allows for replacement attorneys to be named if something happens to the original attorneys.

However, you can't issue instructions for when this is done – so for example you can't say they should step in when your attorneys are on holiday. You can't give an attorney power to appoint a replacement either.

11. Trying to give attorneys the power to change your will

This isn't allowed, so the application will fail.

12. Adding the wrong type of instructions

If you add financial instructions to a health and welfare LPA it will fail, and vice versa. If you want them to be able to cover both, you'll need both types of LPA.